The Use of a Personal Trainer to Enhance Participation of Older Adults with Severe Disabilities in a Community Water Exercise Class

Inclusive instruction was provided for three older adults with profound mental retardation in a water exercise class at a local YMCA. The older adults were taught to exercise through the use of systematic prompting. A multiple baseline design across participants with an embedded reversal was used to evaluate the impact of a personal trainer. The three participants performed the exercise, but regressed without the assistance of the trainer, as demonstrated by the reversal. Data collected during peer prompting and maintenance conditions indicated that the participants continued to exercise at levels higher than baseline but lower than with a personal trainer.     

The effect of social skills training procedures on the acquisition of appropriate interpersonal skills for mentally retarded adults

A pretest/posttest control group design was utilized to examine the effect of social skills training on social interactions with peers, conversational interactions with a novel partner, and ratings of overall social functioning. The results failed to support the hypothesis that social skills training could increase the generalization of overall conversational responding of mentally retarded adults. The results showed that social skills training augmented with self-monitored videotape feedback could not optimize the effects of social skills training alone. The subjects did demonstrate acquisition of the targeted behaviors during training by meeting preestablished criteria for all of the training sessions. However, the subjects failed to generalize those behaviors across settings to in vivosocial situations.     

SUPPORTED EMPLOYMENT AS AN INTERVENTION PACKAGE: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF FUNCTIONAL VARIABLES

In this two-experiment investigation, the long-term (at least 6 months) employment of 51 moderately mentally retarded clients who were placed into 64 supported employment positions was first evaluated relative to 10 training and posttraining components that comprised a supported employment training package. In Experiment 1, chi-square analyses were used to identify three components that differentiated successful (employed for at least 6 months) from unsuccessful clients. In Experiment 2, 4 successful clients were further evaluated in a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design to determine whether the three variables identified during the group analysis (client advocate, collateral behavior, and follow-up plan) were included in the training packages. These results are discussed in terms of the need to establish better the functional variables of supported employment training programs.     

NONVOCAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN ADOLESCENTS WITH SEVERE PHYSICAL DISABILITIES: BLISSYMBOL VERSUS ICONIC STIMULUS FORMATS

This study compared training in two language systems for three severely handicapped, nonvocal adolescents: the Bliss symbol system and an iconic picture system. Following baseline, training and review trials were implemented using an alternating treatments design. Daily probes were conducted to assess maintenance, stimulus generalization, and response generalization, and data were collected on spontaneous usage of either language system throughout the school day. Results showed that students required approximately four times as many trials to acquire Bliss symbols as iconic pictures, and that students maintained a higher percentage of iconic pictures. Stimulus generalization occurred in both language systems, while the number of correct responses during responses generalization probes was much greater for the iconic system. Finally, students almost always showed more iconic responses than Bliss responses in daily spontaneous usage. These results suggest that an iconic system might be more readily acquired, maintained, and generalized to daily situations. Implications of these findings for the newly verbal person were discussed.     

TREATMENT OF SELF-INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR USING A WATER MIST: INITIAL RESPONSE SUPPRESSION AND GENERALIZATION

This study evaluated the effects of a fine mist of water applied to the face contingent upon self-injurious behavior (SIB) exhibited by profoundly retarded persons. In Experiment 1, results of individual reversal designs showed substantial reductions in a variety of SIB's (mouthing, hand biting, skin tearing, and head banging) for seven participants. In Experiment 2, two participants who frequently bit their hands were each observed in two different settings. Following initial baselines in each setting, a series of manipulations was undertaken to compare the effects of mild verbal punishment (“No”) with those of a combined treatment (“No” plus mist procedure). Results in one setting indicated that “No” suppressed SIB only after it was first paired with the water mist. Data also suggested that, once acquired, the punishing properties of “No” could be extended to a second setting in which the mist was never applied, and that these effects could be generalized across therapists. Results of these experiments indicate that the water mist procedure may be an effective alternative to traditional punishment techniques. Although conclusions regarding generalization are limited due to the brevity of the maintenance conditions, the data suggest that treatment gains may be transferred to more acceptable forms of social punishment and reinforcement.     

MULTIPLE TREATMENT INTERFERENCE IN THE ALTERNATING TREATMENTS DESIGN AS A FUNCTION OF THE INTERCOMPONENT INTERVAL LENGTH

In experimental designs requiring the administration of more than one treatment to the same subject(s), the effect of one treatment may be influenced by the effect of another treatment (Campbell & Stanley, 1963), a phenomenon known as multiple treatment interference. We conducted two studies in which multiple treatment interference in an alternating treatments design was shown to be a function of the length of the intercomponent interval (ICI) separating treatment conditions. In the first study, we evaluated the effects of four different treatments on the mouthing of a severely retarded boy. Under a 1-min ICI no consistent differential responding to treatment was obtained. Differential responding emerged when the ICI was increased from 1 min to 120 min, thus suggesting multiple treatment interference in the lack of differential responding under a 1-min changeover interval. Functional control of the nondifferential and differential responding as a function of the ICI length was replicated in a reversal phase. In the second study, we compared two treatment procedures for the disruptive noncompliant behavior of a moderately retarded boy. Multiple treatment interference (i.e., the lack of differential responding) occurred with the 1-min intercomponent interval. An increase to a 120-min ICI again resulted in differential responding. A replication of multiple treatment interference by a reversal to a short interval phase was not achieved in the second subject. Results of this study support much of the basic literature on discrimination and multiple treatment interference. Major findings of this study are twofold: Multiple treatment interference can depend on the length of the changeover interval between treatments and multiple treatment interference can take the form of a lack of differential responding to various treatments. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Short-Term Memory Deficits Are Not Uniform in Down and Williams Syndromes

Neuropsychological investigation of the development of the mnesic function in mental retardation has primarily focused on evaluating short-term memory (STM). Studies have often documented a reduced verbal short-term memory span in individuals with mental retardation and with Down syndrome in particular, compared to groups of mental age-matched controls. However, recent evidence suggests that verbal short-term memory is not equally impaired in all individuals with mental retardation. Findings in children with Williams syndrome are particularly relevant in this regard. Also, data concerning STM for visual information suggest that visual-object and visual-spatial working memory may be differently compromised in people with mental retardation. In particular, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit specific difficulties in visual-spatial but not in visual-object working memory tasks compared to typically-developing children matched for mental age. Instead, people with Down syndrome show reduced performance in both visual-spatial and visual-object tests. Taken together, these results reinforce the view that intellectual disability is not a unitary condition characterized by homogeneous slowness of cognitive development but a variety of conditions in which some cognitive functions may be more disrupted than others. The finding that the working memory deficit in individuals with Williams and Down syndrome may be qualitatively differentiated also supports the hypothesis that it is not simply a manifestation of general cognitive impairment but, rather, the expression of a specific deficit of a discrete cognitive ability.     

Recombinative generalization of within-syllable units in nonreading adults with mental retardation

Two adults with mental retardation demonstrated the recombination of within-syllable units (onsets and rimes) using a spoken-to-printed-word matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure. Further testing with 1 participant showed comprehension of the printed words. Printed-word naming was minimal before, but greater after, comprehension tests. The findings suggest that these procedures hold promise for further basic and applied analyses of word-attack skills.     

TRAINING AND GENERALIZATION OF SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION SKILLS FOR WOMEN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

Previous research has shown that behavioral skills training to teach sexual abuse prevention skills to women with mental retardation results in skill acquisition but poor generalization. In this investigation we evaluated procedures for enhancing generalization following training. Five women with mental retardation received 10 behavioral skills training sessions followed by in situ training when the skills did not fully generalize. Behavioral skills training resulted in skill acquisition and in situ training produced generalized responding during naturalistic assessments.     

Evaluation of a sexual abuse prevention program for adults with mental retardation.

Programs to teach sexual abuse prevention skills to persons with mental retardation have rarely been evaluated empirically, and typical evaluations are limited to assessment of the participants' knowledge rather than their performance of specific skills. In the present study, 6 adult women with mental retardation were trained in sexual abuse prevention, and performance was assessed using four separate measures: pretests and posttests of knowledge, verbal report, role play, and naturalistic probes. All women learned the skills but failed to exhibit them to criterion during the probes. We discuss the implications for further training and assessment of sexual abuse prevention skills.